


All That Remains

by cognomen



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Canadian Shack, Casual Exhibitionism, Casual Sex, Character Study, F/M, Finger Sucking, Fujiko realtalks Jigen and he doesn't like it, Functional Poly ships where one or more individuals don't necessarily like each other, Hand Jobs, Handjob Through Pants, Heist, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Multi, OT5 ride or die, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Tags May Change, bad hand-related jokes, boys being the usual level of boy-gross, various individual pairings moreso than an orgy but they're all aware of it and no one is cheating, work in progress tags may change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:26:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: The weather that greets them just off the plane on the gravel runway in the middle of nowhere seems blistering cold to Jigen. The air is dry as crystal and his breath only fogs until his lungs can’t warm it enough for vapor before he breathes it out again.Canada, north of the arctic circle. Even midsummer is colder than he likes his winters. Of course, Jigen likes his winters in Rio on the beach, with some kind of frozen alcoholic drink at hand.-Lupin drags the gang to Nunavut, Canada in search of what's left of John Franklin's lost 1845 expedition. Jigen has had better surprises. Then, of course, Zenigata arrives to ruin their already bad day, and everything that could go wrong, does.
Relationships: Arsène Lupin III/Zenigata Kouichi, Ishikawa Goemon XIII/Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III/Mine Fujiko, Jigen Daisuke/Arsène Lupin III
Comments: 45
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

The weather that greets them just off the plane on the gravel runway in the middle of nowhere seems blistering cold to Jigen. The air is dry as crystal and his breath only fogs until his lungs can’t warm it enough for vapor before he breathes it out again.

Canada, north of the arctic circle. Even midsummer is colder than he likes his winters. Of course, Jigen likes his winters in Rio on the beach, with some kind of frozen alcoholic drink at hand. 

Wordlessly, he hauls the heavy, bulky supply crate out of the stolen Cessna’s cargo pod. It takes several good tugs to get the thing free, and then he finds himself over-matched by the weight and he settles for a controlled fall onto the plowed-flat snow of the apron. 

“Welcome to Canada,” Lupin says, jumping down from the pilot’s seat to make a dramatic turn-around. With outstretched arms he indicates the snowpack, black and rocky soil, and overall brown and dismal look of the place. There’s a bay nearby, but the air is so cold Jigen can’t even smell the salt as he tries to pry the nailed-on top of the crate off with the supplied crowbar.

“More specifically,” Lupin continues, conducting his symphony as if his companions are listening intently. Jigen is more concerned with how rapidly his balls have retreated into his body cavity. Lupin could preface his surprise missions with a note to wear long underwear. “We’re in Taloyaok, Nunavut.”

The shriek of nails finally loosening their hold and letting the wooden lid of the crate spring open punctuates Lupin’s words with an ugly noise. Goemon sneezes in the aftermath, having dropped down from the plane’s cabin with his usual silent grace.

“Forgive my directness,” Goemon says, sniffling delicately into one sleeve. “But why are we here?”

Jigen finally manages to unearth their damn coats from the bottom of the crate, where they’ve spent the time serving as padding for two huge packs of gear and a suitcase. _Of course, the_ gear _gets some respect…_

“That’s easy. We’re going to find the _Terror_.” Lupin makes the proclamation like he’s pleased with his own mysterious wit, even under Goemon’s sudden withering glare.

Jigen brings Goemon his coat, even as he battles the instinct to indulge Lupin’s expectations of requests for clarity or questions he can make witty answers to. Goemon takes the garment and pulls it on, glare softening into something grateful to Jigen for the gesture.

When nothing answers Lupin’s grandiose introduction and explanation, he turns on his companions. “Aw, c’mon guys… aren’t you even gonna _ask_?”

Jigen pulls his own coat on, eyes still pinned on Lupin.

“The only terror I see is how far we seem to be from any place warm to sleep,” Goemon says, his eyes scanning the tiny, low-slung town attached to the runway. “And we’ll only have one means of escape.”

“Two, technically,” Lupin gestures at the bay. “One by sea and one by air. Anyway, where’s my coat?”

Jigen throws it more _at_ Lupin than to him, but Lupin snatches it deftly out of the air with his usual infuriating cunning. “One of those dumpy looking sheds better be a hotel.”

“Of a sorts,” Lupin says. “And before you ask, we’re already booked there.”

“What a friggin’ delight,” Jigen says. “I suppose you better tell us what we’re here for, so I can decide whether you’re sleeping on the floor or not.”

“Aw, c’mon guys,” Lupin fishes around in the crate until he can pull out the briefcase. “It’s gonna be really good. Surprisingly, they were booked pretty solid. I could only get one room. But, we can’t leave the gear out here.”

“Who exactly is going to steal it?” Goemon wonders. 

By ‘we’ of course Lupin means that Jigen and Goemon should lug in the heavy packs. Jigen trades a look with Goemon and then both of them look at the small briefcase in Lupin’s hand.

“It’s not that anyone will take it, fellas, it’s that if it gets too cold out tonight some of it might get damaged. It’s pretty sensitive, you know.”

Jigen stops to stare at Lupin. He digs down into the layers of jacket and suit coat over his chest and comes up with his pack of cigarettes. Goemon hauls one heavy pack out, probably more interested in taking the shortest route out of the cold, rather than standing around in it to argue. 

“So what are we stealing?” Jigen prompts, lighting his cigarette.

“I’ve been _trying_ to tell you,” Lupin says, gesturing Jigen along. Goemon has already turned to head toward the sparse settlement.

Jigen has considerably more trouble muscling the pack out of the crate with the filter of his cigarette clamped between his teeth, grunting and levering himself against what feels like two thirds of his body weight until he can get it slung over one shoulder. It still seems to drag him earthwards. _I always wind up with the heaviest one._

-

The room is extremely practical, two beds and two feet of space between them, just enough to admit a shared bedside table between them with two budget lamps and a cheap digital alarm clock. The walls are decorated in an abundance of kitschy moose-themed garbage. The other edges of the beds are against the opposite walls of the nook they’re shoved into, with about five feet at the foot end. It looks more like a convent for some nuns that have taken a vow not to own anything than a hotel room.

Lupin sets his suitcase on the end of one of the not-very-comfortable looking beds and turns to weather the disbelieving stares of his partners. He clears his throat, cutting off their protests with his proposition. “So, as you undoubtedly know, last year the wreck of the HMS _Erebus_ was finally located. A real historical treasure and a great place to start looking for the other half of the story.”

Jigen unloads the heavy pack of gear into the five by five space between the foot of the beds and the dated entertainment center. The TV sitting on it is dusty, and he doubts it even gets cable. _What a dump._ When Goemon sets his pack down too, it leaves just barely enough space to get by on the way to the head.

“Okay,” Jigen says. “So this terror you mentioned—it’s a legend? A ghost story with treasure at the end?”

“It’s a ship!” Lupin crows delightedly. “One of the two from the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. Kind of a big deal around these parts. He and most of his crew vanished looking for the Northwest Passage, and it’s been a huge mystery what happened. If we can get to the HMS _Terror_ before anyone else, we’ll have the best pick of artifacts.”

It takes a minute for Jigen to process the magnitude of how bad the plan is. When he does, he needs another cigarette despite the prominent, moose-decorated no-smoking signs plastered around the room. He lights, waiting for Goemon to bring up his objections. Rough smoke warms his lungs a little and smooths his nerves over. Finally, he has to break the hanging silence. “A shipwreck.”

“That’s it, Jigen!” Lupin enthuses.

Goemon sits down on the other bed, removing his katana from its place at his side and going into the attitude of meditation, apparently accepting the news as if it’s his fate to suffer for Lupin’s bad ideas.

“Underwater,” Jigen clarifies with Lupin, before looking out the single window at the drift of snow—not fresh, but not melting, either—outside the window.

“Probably,” Lupin says, grinning widely.

“What are we supposed to do, dive for it?” Jigen demands. He has several very vivid premonitions of how cold the water will be and how many things can go wrong when all your limbs are numb enough at any depth outside of a kiddy pool. The thought of coming up and finding nothing but a thick sheet of ice overhead is near panic-inducing after his years of experience with what can go wrong. At times like these, he wishes Goemon wasn’t so Zen about most of Lupin’s curveballs. If he hasn’t said no already, Goemon isn’t going to, but Jigen knows that when they find this—whatever it is—if someone’s going into the subzero sea-water, it’s probably him. It doesn’t reassure him a whole lot that Lupin would probably be in the water with him. He doesn’t like their chances against hypothermia or frigging polar bears.

“I have a plan for that, Jigen,” Lupin pulls out his best attempt to soothe down Jigen’s rough edges, all the while smiling a brilliant ‘trust me’ smile that’s all teeth.

“I’m out.” Jigen ignores it when Goemon cracks an eye open to look at him, revealing he hasn’t been as deep in meditation as he’s been pretending. “I’ll sleep in the plane. Radio me when you’re ready for evac.”

“But—” Lupin claws the air, lurching after Jigen as he wheels for the door, but his mind is made up in this case. He slams the door in Lupin’s face behind him and stalks out through the sparse community-center-slash-lobby the place has. The receptionist, a ninety year old native Nunavut Inuit, lurches to his feet as Jigen pushes past him and back out into the cold.

“You can’t smoke in here!”

“Don’t friggin worry about it!” Jigen shouts back, though the cold has sucker-punched him in the gut again, he ignores the immediate consequences of his own actions and crunches through the plowed-down snow of the parking lot back toward the plane on the not-so-distant runway.

-

He tries not to take it personally that Lupin doesn’t come to try and talk him out of it. For being so stupid, Lupin is smart enough to know when cold, hunger, and boredom will do a job for him. Jigen’s stubbornness overmatches his growling stomach—he’s gotten pretty good at sustaining himself on coffee, cigarettes and bitterness while on stakeout or between jobs when cash is somehow scarce. The sun sets only barely, but earlier than he’s used to, and after that the cold intensifies. Added to that, it’s impossible to get comfortable in the cramped pilot’s seat.

After waiting through half a pack of cigarettes, Jigen has to surrender to practicality and put on gloves. His fingers are numb and his ears and nose have started to ache a little. The plane cabin is enclosed, but the wind is whipping up around it at a steady clip, keeping things cold inside. He’s left all the rest of his supplies—food, clothes, and cigarettes (most importantly)—back at the room. It’ll take some of the wind out of his protest if he has to slink back in for more smokes and a snack.

When it comes down to either jamming a set of mittens over his gloves or feeling like his fingers are going to fall off even stuffed into his pants pockets against his thighs, Jigen decides the only person he’s going to concede defeat to is himself, anyway. He’d compromise his quick-draw in mittens, but gloves alone are no match for the tundra night. 

His teeth are chattering by the time he gets back to the room. The door is unlocked, revealing Lupin’s usual level of expectant foresight. Jigen finds the room dark, with the remains of the evening meal scattered over the bedside table and on the floor in styrofoam containers between the beds. 

The warm air in the room can’t penetrate his coat fast enough for Jigen, so he strips it and the gloves quickly. His tantrum has cost him any chance to claim one of the two dorm-sized beds as his own, but at this exact second he can’t afford to be picky. He kicks his soaked loafers off into the pile of gear somewhere and peels his wet socks off his frigid feet. He takes the time to hang his hat on the corner of the TV, someplace it won’t be stepped on. 

Jigen assesses his options and decides stealing Lupin’s blanket is less likely to get him eviscerated. He reaches out to snag the top layer of blanket and starts to drag it free.

Lupin’s hand darts out and catches Jigen’s wrist, dragging him off balance and half down onto the bed. 

“Jeez,” Lupin mutters. “You’re really cold, you know? And I don’t just mean your attitude.”

Lupin chuckles at his own joke, a pillow-drowned sound as he suddenly unfolds and spiders his limbs out under the blankets, yanking Jigen’s wrist as he does. He engulfs Jigen with them, performing some complex maneuver to pull Jigen into the warmth beneath.

Nonplussed, Jigen finds a place to lodge his cold feet against Lupin’s bare thighs, eliciting a yelp against his ear. It’s almost an immediate relief to his frozen extremities. Lupin’s usual level of furnace-like warmth is a blessing for once.

“Some of us are trying to sleep,” Goemon’s voice is quiet, but holds a grouchy warning against further horseplay.

“Glad you changed your mind,” Lupin purrs against Jigen’s ear, a delighted uptick in his voice. Jigen shifts, trying to find a position where some part of him won’t be hanging off the short, narrow mattress. The soft tone against intimate skin has always done things to Jigen—he’s just gotten good at disconnecting from the immediate effects. It’s the deeper warmth and loyalty he’s never been able to stop, and all those things compound in him when Lupin encourages them.

It’s no different when Lupin’s plastered warmly against him. Jigen’s still not sure he logically forgives Lupin for dragging them here on a hare-brained Indiana Jones scheme, but he forgives Lupin _emotionally_ almost immediately every time. 

“Shut up,” Jigen says, finding a way to shift so that it’s just his legs hanging off the mattress below the knee, still wrapped in the blanket. He’s extremely sore and tired from sitting in the uncomfortable pilot seat too long and shivering.

“And they said romance was dead,” Lupin always has to have the last word, but when he seals it against Jigen’s cheekbone with a grateful kiss, Jigen doesn’t mind so much.

-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -oops the rating immediately went up, note new tags as well  
> -sorry if you find any parts of this gross, I have a weakness for/find that sort of thing funny in most regards.  
> -I figure this show requires a certain tolerance for dude hijinks anyway

Jigen is sound asleep, tired enough that his guard is down given that the number-one threat to his well being on any given day is tangled half beneath him on the narrow mattress, also asleep. It means that there’s none of the usual warning twinge of his nerves before a heavy weight drops onto him and he feels something crunch in his back as it lands, grinding a guttural sound out of him as the air drives out of his chest. A brilliant spark of pain gives way to the sudden bliss of realignment in his spine. It blanks Jigen’s mind with unexpected relief from the tension of the day releasing. 

He has enough experience with getting landed on that he recognizes the soft, curvy weight now half-crushing him into the cheap mattress, so he doesn’t shoot her. 

“This bed has too many elbows,” Fujiko complains overhead, pulling at the blankets until she’s peeled enough layers back to look beneath. Peering into Jigen’s face she breathes a displeased huff on him, her breath smelling like cheap american beer. “Ugh, I should have known it was you. You’re  _ all _ elbows. Move over!”

“Hey, Fujiko!” Lupin sounds neither surprised nor anything less than ecstatic that she’s here. “Glad you could make it!”

“Just friggin'  _ great _ —” Jigen’s complaint cuts off with an involuntary yelp as Fujiko’s freezing hands plunge into the warm space between his belly and Lupin’s when she starts trying to pry her way into the warmest place beneath the blankets.

Jigen just surrenders his tiny part of the bed, irritated by her brazen liberties with intimacy.  _ She’s drunk. _ It’s not worth the fight and enduring Goemon glaring at the three of them for interrupting his carefully scheduled two-point-five-or-whatever hours of sleep.

Lupin’s giggling is going to do that anyway, but  _ he _ can take the brunt of Goemon’s ire and Jigen can have the fight with him about Fujiko in the morning. It feels a little more like a symbolic gesture every time Jigen brings it up, but damn if it’s not the hill he’ll die on. (Before he dies at the bottom of it after she sells them out for the eight-hundredth time, predictably enough that Jigen’s starting to suspect it’s actually some kind of kink for Lupin.)

Jigen slinks into the bathroom to let the pressure in his bladder off, and notes his back really does feel better despite the rude awakening. He makes a note never to mention that to Fujiko ever in his life.  _ She’d probably send a bill. _

When he’s done washing his hands, he wanders into the death-aura surrounding Goemon’s bed and risks his life with a companionable nudge. It has no immediate effect, but Goemon relents after a second, probably the time it takes to decide if it’s worth having to clean Jigen’s guts off Zantetsuken. He pulls his feet up, shifting over a fraction to offer Jigen the bottom end of the bed.

It’s the best Jigen’s going to get unless he gives in and goes to sleep on one of the cafeteria tables. He slings himself up between the two beds with his shoulders and head on the end of Goemon’s, his ass on the ground, and his feet on the end of the bed Lupin is currently sharing with Fujiko. He gropes around until he comes up with someone’s coat to drape over himself and does his best to sleep through Fujiko rebuffing Lupin’s advances. He’s had a lot of practice in that skill.

-

Jigen is up earlier than usual—before either Lupin or Fujiko, so he gets dressed quickly and drags himself out of the room to see what this place has for breakfast. At first he doesn’t find anything, but he scrounges through the cardboard boxes of second hand appliances left in the open eating area until he comes up with a coffee maker and a hot pot for boiling water. He sets both on the cheap folding table, his thoughts a careful blank after poor sleep and before coffee. He registers mild irritation when he can’t find any coffee grounds. 

He goes to the check-in-desk-slash-supply-closet area and rifles around with exactly zero shits to spare if he’s supposed to be doing it or not. _It’s a hotel, there should be coffee out already._ He finds an old can of Eight O’Clock coffee that sounds like it still has some in it when he gives it a shake but no sign of sugar or even powdered creamer. He tucks it under one arm as he returns to the seating area so his hands are free to light a cigarette. 

The hot pot is steaming when he returns and finds Goemon sitting in one of the chairs and staring studiously at a bowl of plain oatmeal. It tells Jigen enough of the story of what’s probably going on back in the room that he’s actually glad there hadn’t just been coffee ready.

“There’s no smoking in here,” Goemon says, as Jigen waits for the coffee to brew.

“Yeah, I know,” Jigen says, without putting the cigarette out. When it and the coffee pot are done he pours it into the first available cup; it’s one of those ‘homey’ establishments where the cups are all unique thrift store rescues. When he turns the mug around so he can take the handle in his off hand he discovers a picture of an ugly fish with a hook in its mouth and the words ‘ _ BASS Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies.’ _

He could not possibly hate this place any more. He takes his coffee black and heads back to the room after dumping the cigarette butt into the trash can, ignoring the vague warning Goemon calls after him about knocking first.

He finds Lupin sitting in just his boxers on the end of the bed, sleepy and with more than the usual morning bulge. The sound of the running shower gives Jigen the rest of the story. He steps into the messy space at the foot of the beds, taking small sips of the too-hot coffee as he watches Lupin in his self-made suffering. There’s a lot of that going around in their group. 

Jigen cuts the angle of his hat brim lower so Lupin is out of his line of sight, to give the guy a little privacy so he can get himself together.

Lupin stands up suddenly, invading Jigen’s space. He starts to back out of the way but his foot gets caught in an errant pack strap and momentary panic that he’ll spill his coffee all over himself if he goes over backwards is stilled quickly by Lupin’s hands on his shoulder holster straps, aborting the fall and setting Jigen back into balance on his feet. His coffee sloshes but doesn’t spill.

Lupin doesn’t let go immediately, leaning in closer instead. His tone emerges in a mischievous lilt. “Say, Jigen, what do you say to a little early morning fooling around?”

_ Can’t get Fujiko.  _ Jigen knows exactly what to say to that. “I’m already dressed.”

Lupin leans into him to catch Jigen’s gaze. His eyes are dark and soft as his hand falls over Jigen’s on the mug, for once affectionate but still intense. Lupin presses their mouths together, all heat and sudden passion, and then draws back sharply, taking advantage of the way Jigen’s heart is skipping beats. “You could get on your knees for me.”

His skilled fingers pick the mug out of Jigen’s hand as his body folds reflexively, his knees hitting the floor hard enough to protest,  _ commanded _ as he always is by Lupin’s tenderness. He’s weak for it, vulnerable and laid bare even as his newly emptied hands paw Lupin’s cock loose from the foldover fly of his boxers. Jigen works his tongue against the roof of his mouth to wet it, then leans in to get his mouth on Lupin’s cock, shamelessly. 

He hears Lupin swallowing and takes a glance up to see his effect on the other man—only to find Lupin drinking his coffee. With a spike of irritation, Jigen plunges in to swallow Lupin to the hilt in some juvenile plan for revenge. The brim of his hat jabs into Lupin’s belly and folds, and Lupin makes a sound that’s surprised and delighted, his free hand dropping onto the crown of the fedora, shoving it first even lower over his eyes, then tweezing the felt of the crown into a bunch to pull it off. Jigen only protests with a faint scrape of his teeth as a reminder of who stands to lose more if Lupin keeps pissing him off. 

“Okay, okay!” Lupin hisses, but he’s laughing, too, and he sets the hat aside delicately on the bed so his hand can go softly into Jigen’s hair and then yank it into a fistful, holding on for both of their benefits. Jigen answers the hold with a grip around the back of Lupin’s thigh and one hand bunched up in the elastic waist of Lupin’s boxers pushing and pulling to keep him more or less still so he can work.

It’s about leverage and control; the pressure of Jigen’s mouth and what gets a reaction. He knows Lupin well enough by now to wrench a reaction out of him, to move it through quick like cleaning out a safe. He pushes the rough flat of his middle-tongue under the head of Lupin’s cock and works with firm efficiency until Lupin is gasping and groaning, tense in his thighs from holding himself upright.

He’s louder than he even is usually, probably making sure Fujiko hears them—Jigen’s not sure if he should feel like he’s marking territory or being used as a prop, but at the moment his focus is too honed to sort it out. It’s only dimly that he realizes he can’t hear the shower running anymore. With Lupin’s cries of pleasure reaching a desperate pitch and his nails in Jigen’s scalp, the meaning of that is lost on him as Lupin tips over the edge, hips bucking forward helplessly. Jigen eases his tongue flat and doesn’t swallow. 

He rocks back off his bruised knees and keeps his teeth closed, old habit that he presses the back of his palm over his mouth to hide any evidence. He passes Fujiko—towel wrapped and smelling cleaner and fresher than she had last night—in the bathroom doorway and doesn’t excuse himself. 

“ _ Boys, _ ” she sighs in theatrical disgust. 

Jigen spits into the toilet without bothering to muffle the sound of the liquid impacting. 

“You’re so gross!” Fujiko calls. Jigen doesn’t bother to disagree.

“He’s just mad at me,” Lupin says, in a dreamy tone that sounds good enough on him that Jigen can feel smug for how weak he is for Lupin’s shit.

“I’m mad at you, too. You couldn’t book separate rooms?” Fujiko asks.

Jigen drinks from the tap until his mouth tastes clear. 

“Believe me, Fujicakes, I tried,” Lupin says. “But it’s fishing season and it’s not like this place has a lot of rooms to begin with.”

Stepping out of the bathroom, Jigen finds Lupin laying back on the bed to bask in his afterglow. Jigen’s hat is on his chest, and he’s still got the coffee cup dangling from one hand, but the angle reveals that he either drank all of it or spilled it on the rug somewhere when he came. 

Jigen moves around Fujiko as she pulls on a heavy sweater and takes his hat back. He settles it back into place then fishes out his pack of cigarettes.

“Where’s Goemon?” Lupin asks, as if just remembering. 

Jigen jerks a thumb toward the door before clicking his lighter on. “Breakfast.”

“You’re not supposed to smoke in here,” Fujiko says, pulling her hair out of the collar of her sweater to tie it up. “Give me one, I’m out.”

Jigen obliges because it’s the easier path, and he likes Fujiko at least a little better when she’s not nicotine deprived. 

“Well, now that everyone’s here we can get our plans together,” Lupin says, still unmoving. 

“What’s Fujiko bringing to the table?” Jigen asks as if she’s not standing right there stealing his lighter for the thirtieth time. He watches it disappear into her pocket without protest, feeling sated enough to be generous. 

“I got us a boat,” she fires back, exhaling smoke in his direction. “What are  _ you _ bringing, Jigen?”

He discards several nasty answers, and just shrugs. “A gun.”

At least they won’t be carrying all the shit in the packs across the tundra on foot if there’s a boat involved.

“Okay,” Lupin sits up at last, dumping the empty cup on top of the leftover cartons on the nightstand. “Give me five to get ready and then I’ll lay it all out for you.”

“Seems like you already laid it out for Jigen,” Fujiko says, cattily.

Lupin only laughs as he grabs a handful of clothes and heads for the bathroom.

-


	3. Chapter 3

“We have a problem,” Goemon says as Jigen and Fujiko join him. The bowl of oatmeal he’d been contemplating earlier has been finished in the meantime.

“Oh yeah?” Jigen asks, moving to get another coffee. He picks what looks like a plain white mug this time only to find another stupid fishing slogan on the back. He ignores it and fills the cup anyway. The cafeteria area is devoid of other occupants despite Lupin’s assurance that this place was booked solid. Jigen decides he’s hungry for once after surrendering the coffee pot to Fujiko and begins rifling through the boxes scattered around the area again. “What’s up?”

“Inspector Zenigata has arrived,” Goemon reveals, with a lack of urgency that suggests the Inspector is not about to bust through the wall with his usual frothing rage. 

“What?” Fujiko demands. “You know, there are some things you should say right away! Where?”

“He’s just up the hall from us.” Goemon retains his calm as a matter of pride. 

“What’s he doing here?” Jigen wonders, looking suspiciously at Fujiko—she seems too upset about it this time to be the one who tipped him off. 

“That rat! I knew all the rooms weren’t booked,” Fujiko grouses. 

Jigen finally comes up with a box of store-brand granola bars and decides to take the whole thing. If there’s no screaming yet, Zenigata isn’t actively after them at this very second.

“It seems he did have a reservation,” Goemon says. “He walked right by me on the way to his room, barely awake. He must have flown all night.”

“Yeah, but Pops isn’t the fishing type,” Jigen starts peeling the first bar, intending to just eat his way through the whole box. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. “He’s here ‘cause we’re here, so why isn’t he giving us grief right now?”

“He came in very late,” Goemon reveals. “And he’s under the impression he arrived before we did.”

Jigen laughs triumphantly, then has to stop and cough, chewing his breakfast so he doesn’t choke on it. “Won’t he be pissed. We better get out of here before he figures it out.”

“Who figures what out?” Lupin asks, joining them. He pauses to pass Fujiko a few packets of sugar and creamer for her coffee, producing them out of pockets that always seem to hold an endless magpie assortment of things Lupin collects as he moves through the world.

“Pops is here,” Jigen tells him, enjoying the immediate shock that writes itself on Lupin’s face.

“Ah man, already? What’s he doing here?”

“It is the only hotel in town,” Goemon points out, as Jigen bolts down another granola bar.

“Maybe he’s on vacation,” Jigen guesses, still chewing but unable to resist teasing Lupin.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Fujiko gulps her coffee in preparation for a hasty exit.

“What are you, my mother?” Jigen fires back, mouth still full. 

Lupin plunges his hand into the box Jigen’s holding without bothering to hide his stealing. He claims two of the bars as his own before Jigen pulls it away to defend his remaining food. 

“I don’t think you have a mother,” Fujiko decides, setting her empty cup aside. “Come on, Goemon. You two get the gear, we’ll meet you at the dock.”

“Hey, we can’t carry all that gear,” Jigen protests. “What if Zenigata wakes up?”

“You better hurry then,” Fujiko calls. Goemon holds the door for her as she exits.

“Jeez,” Jigen grumps, starting on another bar before dumping the last remaining two into his coat pocket. “She’s up to something, you know that right?”

“Jigen, we’re all up to something,” Lupin tells him, serenely. Reaching out, he flicks a nail against the rim of Jigen’s new coffee cup. “After all, good things come to those who bait.”

-

The boat is bigger than Jigen is expecting, not just some fishing trawler but a proper boat with an engine and a rig to launch something off the side. It’s some kind of research vessel rigged up on an old coast-guard icebreaker hull. Jigen sets down the heavy pack on the deck with a thud, earning a wince from Lupin who places his pack a little more delicately despite the fact that he’s panting for breath from carrying it here at a trot. 

“What’s in these, anyway?” Jigen demands, as Lupin catches his breath noisily.

“My latest invention,” Lupin brightens up to announce, as he finally gets himself together. He jams a hand in his pocket, coming up with the granola bars he’d stolen earlier, somewhat mashed from their trip. “A remote mini-sub. That should give us the upper hand in getting artifacts to the surface, don’t you think?”

With his plan divulged, Lupin begins eating ravenously.

“You and Pops and your inventions,” Jigen says, rather than admitting he’s impressed. “You’re more alike than you care to admit.”

 _If only he had half the attention span Zenigata does,_ Jigen thinks, watching Lupin barely chew his food as Goemon helps Fujiko undo the moorings and get the boat launched. _Who am I kidding? Then he’d really be insufferable._

“That’s not funny, Jigen,” Lupin tells him, wrinkling his nose up primly.

Jigen thinks it’s hilarious, but everyone’s a critic. “I suppose you have some idea where we should start looking?” 

“Yeah, it just so happens that I do,” Lupin settles down on the deck, wiping his hands on his slacks and letting the wrappers from the conquered granola bars scatter into the wind. He opens the packs of equipment and starts laying parts neatly out on the deck so he can begin assembly. He pauses when Jigen doesn’t appear to be satisfied with the short answer. Fishing around in his down coat, he comes up with a pocket-sized leatherbound book. “I have Franklin’s diary.”

He waves it at Jigen demonstratively, without bothering to look up from his project. Jigen takes it, flipping through. “I thought he died out here looking for the Northwest Passage. Isn’t that why any of this is worth anything?”

“Well,” Lupin says, starting to fit parts together deftly. “His wife sent two further expeditions after Franklin never returned, and most of the crewmen probably died. But one got out, and he had Franklin’s journal with him.”

Jigen finds the messy cursive inside hard to read, and the story itself a little hard to swallow—but he trusts Lupin’s instincts. As long as he doesn’t have to do any diving under the ice, it’s fine with Jigen. 

“Nice work.” Jigen tosses the journal back to Lupin.

“Hey, watch it! This thing’s worth a pretty penny too, you know.”

“Good,” Jigen says. “If all this goes belly up, we can sell it and keep our shirts for once.”

He leaves Lupin to the fiddly work of assembling the mini-sub and goes to investigate the rest of the boat they’ll probably be spending the next few days on. It’s cigar-shaped with a pointed heavy hull designed to split and smash ice down under the belly of the ship. 

Below decks he finds several cabins, much to his relief. It’s still only three but Fujiko can have her own this way, and they’ll all suffer less. He finds a little galley, too, and rifles it for anything interesting, feeling the boat pick up speed as they make it out of the small harbour.

“Trying to find all my lingerie?” Fujiko’s voice carries ahead of her as she comes up the narrow hall belowdecks.

“Not unless you keep your underwear in the pantry,” Jigen answers. He carries on rather than sit here and play cat and mouse with her over something they both know isn’t true. “This is a nice boat, Fujiko, I have to hand it to you. Should I ask where you stole it from?”

“I didn’t steal it,” Fujiko rolls her eyes at him, reaching past Jigen into the small galley fridge to pull out a drink. “I won it at cards.”

Jigen laughs in spite of himself, respecting her skill anyway. She’s beaten them all down to their boxers more than once, and taken so many expensive watches from Jigen that all he owns now is a beat up Casio. “Did you cheat?”

“What kind of girl do you think I am?” Fujiko asks, tipping her chin up in a haughty, insulted gesture—but she’s smiling in that satisfied way she has when she gets away with something.

“Then you stole it,” Jigen affirms, and she doesn’t deny it this time.

Fujiko stops in the galley archway, her delicate fingers in close-fitting leather gloves working the tab on her soda back and forth in an uncertain gesture. The hesitation is so unlike her that Jigen senses she’s about to say something he probably won’t like. He braces for it internally, getting his hackles up.

“You know, he’d treat you better if you said ‘no’ to him every once in a while,” she finally out and says, way out of left field.

“Huh?” Jigen gropes for his pack of cigarettes, trying to figure out anything else she could be talking about. Fujiko has never acknowledged this— _thing_ between Jigen and Lupin as anything more than an annoyance to her. There really isn’t anything else she could be talking about.

She pops the pull tab off the soda can with a twang. “He likes to be deprived sometimes. _He_ told me that, by the way, I’m not just making it up.”

“Holy crap,” is all Jigen can manage to say. “Are you being _nice_ to me?”

Fujiko immediately bristles, looking up at him sharply with her shoulders raised defensively. “I’m trying to be, you lanky jerk!”

Jigen feels the shock of _that_ settle in somewhere. It’s hit _a_ target, but he can’t be sure which one yet. “Why now, all of a sudden?”

“I guess now, not so all-of-a-sudden, I finally figured out you were serious about this and it wasn’t just… boy stuff,” Fujiko stops looking at him, letting her gaze drift away. “I didn’t know you could be serious.”

Jigen lights up, glad that there hasn’t been a single no-smoking sign since they’d left the hotel. _Is it serious?_ It hadn’t started that way, anyway. Just fooling around. But Fujiko’s remark stings in a different way. “I’m serious about a lot of things.”

“Daisuke Jigen, you sleep eighteen hours a day and spend the other six pretty much chewing Lupin’s food for him,” Fujiko says. “That’s not anyone’s version of ‘serious’ but yours.”

 _She’s out for blood today._ Jigen lets her words sit in silence for a stretch so she can compose herself, not wanting to open up any other targets for her to hit. It takes that long to get his answer together. “I’m not you, Fujiko. Saying ‘no’ isn’t really my thing no matter how hard I try. It wouldn’t work for me like it does for you, anyway.”

Fujiko looks at him for a long time, one of those almost-soft motherly looks that seems to drive Lupin wild. “No, you aren’t me. It’s not as much of a weakness as you think it is.”

“Huh? Weakness?” Jigen is absolutely flummoxed by this line of discussion. Suspicion jags suddenly up the back of his spine—no way Fujiko doesn’t have some motive for trying to put him off guard like this. “What’s this about all of a sudden, anyway? You’re making me nervous with this shit.”

Fujiko rolls her eyes again. “Let someone be nice to you. I know you’re not used to it.”

Jigen shifts back, now even warier.

“Fine,” she sighs. “I hope you get eaten by a polar bear.”

She shrugs his suspicion off one lovely shoulder and leaves him to stew in it.

-

Jigen’s got to nap that one off. He picks one of the smaller bunks at first, then figures if he doesn’t want to get interrupted in his attempts to catch up on rest, he’s going to have to get creative. Find someplace he won’t be found.

He finds the supply closet and in the process of dragging the mops out he finds a thick fisherman’s sweater that smells more like pine-sol than fish, at least. He pulls it on. _Finders keepers._

He folds himself into the space with his coat wedged behind his head and his hat over his eyes. Normally, he can sleep just about anywhere without any preamble, but of course Fujiko had to mess with him.

He’s tired from sleeping badly. They have time, and no one’s shooting at them for once. It’s a perfect time to get some sleep. _So what did she mean, bringing all that up?_ The hard floor is digging into his hip, so he tosses over restlessly. _I say no. Lots of times._ Except, the last time he’d wavered and now here he was anyway. 

Jigen isn’t any more comfortable in this position so he shifts again. He has to keep his legs folded to fit into the space, though he can prop his heels up higher than his head on one of the supply shelves, and that’s almost good enough. _What else was I supposed to do? If it was anywhere else, I would have booked into another hotel to sit this out._

It’s just the situation that worked against him this time. If they weren’t in the middle of nowhere… but of course it wasn’t the _jobs_ that Fujiko meant he should say no to.

 _What’s it matter to her, anyway?_ Jigen bunches his coat up under his head. He has no idea what her game is. _Mystery of the friggin’ universe._

Maybe he could have the luxury of saying no if Lupin was as adamant with Jigen as he was with Fujiko. _It’s not like—_

But whatever it isn’t like, he’s run out of steam, finally comfortable enough to sleep. _Just forget it. She’s trying to get under my skin._ He’ll be fine if he just sleeps it off, as usual.

-


	4. Chapter 4

The door opens suddenly, spilling Jigen halfway out into the hall in a heap, and he comes to rest against Goemon’s shins while still half-awake. _When did I get so sloppy that everyone can sneak up on me like this?_

“It is your turn to pilot the boat,” Goemon informs him.

Jigen stretches his back and shoulders and disengages from the stack of mops his legs have tangled into, getting up with Goemon’s offer of a hand up. “Alright. How much further do we have to go?”

“Not too far, but we require the ship’s icebreaking capabilities.”

“You know this thing isn’t really qualified to cut a channel through serious ice-pack, right?”Jigen wonders, pulling his shirt straight under his second-hand sweater. He follows Goemon through the short corridors and up the ladder into the bridge. 

“It’s not really my territory. However, Lupin seems to be under the impression you can accomplish the task.”

Jigen brushes his hair back with one hand and resettles his hat. If Lupin’s making that kind of claim, there’s about a fifty percent chance of utter catastrophe. Good odds, considering the present company.

“There you are, Jigen,” Lupin has a nautical map in his hands, plastered in his messy handwriting. “We’re pretty much there, we just need you to punch us through about half a mile.”

Jigen yawns, giving his back a final stretch before he steps up to examine the controls. It’s full dim outside, as dark as it will get this time of year with the sun just dipping below the horizon. Out the windows he can see the sheet-ice. It’s thin here at the edges but it will get thicker quickly as they get closer to the glacier shelves.

“What about your sub? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to send it out ahead?” Jigen studies the gauges, and he's glad whoever owned the boat before Fujiko was thoughtful enough to put the draw depth, ship length, and tow-tonnage capabilities on the console in bold hand and permanent marker. _Scientists,_ he thinks to himself, amused.

“It’s got a limited range,” Lupin explains. “It needs a constant flow of antifreeze to operate at these temperatures, so it has a cable tether. But, this boat can get us close enough, don’t you think?”

Jigen puts his hands on the wheel. “You know, speed boats are more my style.”

“Typical.” Lupin grins at him, all challenge. “But you can do it, right?”

The confidence inspires some quiet pleasure in Jigen for the recognition of his skill. Usually, smashing things apart is Lupin’s specialty, but when Jigen shifts the engine into the rougher gear and feels the pull yank through the whole frame of the heavy boat, he can’t deny it’s going to feel good. 

“That’s where we’re going.” Lupin points to an indistinguishable point on the horizon, just to the starboard of their center line, and Jigen lets off the release, channeling the engine power into the propulsion systems. The icebreaker lurches forward and the slush and ice parts at first without a whisper of resistance, then grinds down under the heavy hull with a racket that would have brought Jigen up here if they hadn’t woken him up anyway.

It’s a deeply visceral, tactile sensation, satisfying in that the resistance that shudders against the hull can only muster itself for a few seconds before it crumbles with a sensation he can feel all the way to his core. 

“Hey!” Lupin shouts over the din. He says something else, but it’s not ‘stop’ and Jigen can’t make it out. He makes an educated assumption and pushes the engines to go faster. Lupin surrenders to a fit of triumphant laughter and edges closer to Jigen. He folds the map into a roughly organized crumple and leans against Jigen’s shoulder, easing up on his toes to speak into Jigen’s ear. 

“I knew you were the best man for the job,” Lupin tells him, smiling like it could go all the way through his body. “You don’t get to have fun enough.”

Jigen feels the flush creep up on the back of his neck, as much for the praise as Lupin purring it into his ear, and he shakes it off. He’s got to focus as the ice gets thicker, and Lupin isn’t making it any easier, smearing himself against Jigen’s side.

The casual touching doesn’t usually get under his skin this bad. Normally after Lupin gets his rocks off, it subsides for a few days. At least a few hours. Still, aside from being out of the ordinary—and Jigen has had exactly too much of that already today—this touch is nice. Feels solid as their progress is forced to slow by thicker, older, ice. The movement of the deck sways them together, like the steps of a dance. It feels good somehow. 

It comes to an abrupt stop when the prickle on the back of Jigen’s neck reveals that they’re being watched. It’s fine if _Goemon_ sees, he’s used to it, and is just as frequently a target of Lupin’s overflowing physical emotions. Jigen shifts away from Lupin, sure Fujiko just stepped onto the bridge. 

“You could have told me you were just going to go ahead,” Fujiko shouts over the engine sounds and breaking ice.

“Sorry!” Lupin squints one eye closed in a feigned wince and slouches into a semi-apologetic posture. “We’re almost there, then you can sleep.”

“Gee, thanks,” Fujiko steps into the walkway at the front of the cabin, wearing nothing but a man’s button-up shirt that’s a few sizes too big for her. Jigen doesn’t know how she isn’t _freezing_. He doesn’t think it’s one of Lupin’s shirts, since the buttons aren’t straining over her boobs. Lupin’s too narrow chested for her to wear his shirts comfortably. She stretches up on her toes and the hem of the shirt rides up her thighs until Jigen looks away and Lupin practically throws himself over the control console to get a better look. 

He slams the throttle and the boat gives a sudden forward jerk, hull lifting up rapidly over a sheet of ice with a heavy crunch that makes Jigen’s stomach lurch. 

“Hey!” He barks at Lupin, as the angle of the ship drastically inclines upwards before he can jam his hand between Lupin’s hip and the control to shut the propulsion off.

The ship slams back down, but doesn’t break the ice—the boat is resting more on top of it than attacking from the front, this ice too thick to smash through with this much surface area under the weight of the boat. Jigen’s teeth rattle and everyone turns to look at him.

“What was _that_ all about?” Fujiko asks, thrown off balance and clutching the front of her shirt like her heart’s beating fast. Everything has suddenly gone quiet.

“Ask friggin’ Lupin,” Jigen growls, shoving him off the console and quickly taking stock of the situation as he switches systems to full reverse.

“Sorry,” Lupin says, dreamily. “I only bumped it!”

 _You only humped it, you mean._ Jigen rolls his eyes. They’ll hold where they are for now, but… “We’re out of the water. Before I try and back us out, we should check the hull for damage.”

“Since it is Lupin’s fault, I nominate him for the job,” Goemon says, radiating his clear displeasure for the situation. 

Fujiko hardly looks pleased either. “I just got this boat, Lupin!”

“Oh boy. Can’t it wait until morning? It’s pretty dark and cold out there,” Lupin wheedles.

“No, it can’t,” Jigen says, firmly. “If we’re not sunk by then, we’ll be stuck if we aren’t already.”

That seems to impress itself on Lupin and he steels himself to go outside, picking his jacket up off one of the instrument panels. “Well, aside from all that, I do have some good news.”

“Oh yeah?” Fujiko demands, her hands on her hips.

“I think we’re there!”

-

They discern that the boat is unharmed, but in the walkaround, Jigen can see how many of the propulsion intakes are out of the water, and how much of the hull is laying on the ice. When they’re climbing back aboard, Jigen dares to ask what’s on his mind.

“So, this Franklin guy. What happened to his expedition again?”

“Well,” Lupin explains almost sheepishly. “He got stuck in the ice, and they starved?”

Jigen was afraid of that. He tries to keep his thoughts trained on the positive—the galley is decently stocked— _we can always eat Fujiko if we’re desperate—_ and they’ve got a radio unlike any 1845 expedition. They can call the coast guard or water-mounties or whoever it is that rescues boats in Canada. Zenigata is sure to show up with them, but Jigen trusts him to tow them out before he slaps the cuffs on and he likes his chances of getting away from Zenigata better. They have a lot of practice at not being arrested, not so much at avoiding death by hypothermia and starvation.

“Well?” Fujiko asks as they make it back up on deck. She’s bundled back up in several layers of clothing to brave the outside.

“No holes. You see anything inside?” Jigen stamps ice and snow off his boots, glad that they’d found some cold weather gear in the boat’s storage.

“No leaks, so that’s good news,” Fujiko answers. “That means we can get out, right?”

“Depends,” Jigen says, brushing past her for the bridge.

“On what?” Fujiko and Lupin both demand in unison, sounding equally childish.

 _On if we can get enough water into the propulsion system with the boat sitting on a friggin’ glacier!_ Seriously, if they’re going to play around on the bridge without even a basic understanding of how ships worked… But, Jigen’s used to it by now. He cycles the engines out of idle and figures it’s all or nothing, opening the throttle. The boat shudders with the engine’s power and Jigen gives it full-reverse.

It doesn’t move. Jigen watches the engine’s heat indicator gauge climb into the red, then shuts it off and brings the engine back down to idle before he blows something out. He turns to find Fujiko and Lupin staring at him expectantly, and shrugs. “No good.”

-

“We should at least _try_ for the treasure,” Lupin sighs, slumped over the small galley table, sniffling occasionally as his nose thaws out.

“We’re close.” Fujiko agrees.

“We got no way to get it out again,” Jigen points out. ‘We need to focus on getting ourselves out of here.”

“What a waste of a trip,” Goemon says.

“It’s not wasted yet!” Lupin lurches up to his feet. “Can’t you get us out of this with Zantetsuken?”

Goemon’s gaze turns into a steely-hard glare, projecting his killing intent strongly enough that even caught in the periphery, Jigen’s molars hurt a little. “I could cut the source of our current troubles.”

“Okay, okay,” Lupin soothes, shrinking away though he seems remarkably undaunted by the clear threat to his life. “I get it, cutting ice isn’t worthy. What about saving your friends?”

Goemon subsides just a little, maybe placated by Lupin failing to show any real fear. “Who said we were friends? Find another way.”

“That’s _so_ cold.”

So far as Jigen’s concerned, that’s two against two and not any closer to a solution. He turns to Lupin again, now that the threat of imminent violence has melted back into the general frustration filling the room. “What’s it gonna take to get your sub launched?”

“We just have to cut a hole in the ice big enough for me to put it through. We should be within easy reach of the _Terror_ from here, and the sub will do all the work for us. With my remote piloting, of course,” Lupin enthuses. “We’re already here, we might as well get what we came for.”

Seems unusually reasonable for something Lupin came up with. Of course, it didn’t take into account anything _else_ going wrong, and bad things happen in threes. Jigen measures that explanation against an internal picture of how it’s likely to go. “What’s your plan for making a hole? If we’ve got the supplies for that, maybe we can use them to get the ship free.”

“Well,” Lupin says with a careful glance at Goemon that reveals he’s about to describe something that before now was just plan B. “I have pickaxes and a couple of heavy duty chainsaws. A few small-charge explosives if the ice is too tough.”

The last part has a little promise, but how to put it to use without damaging the ship? “That’s fine for making a little hole. We need to bust the ice out from under this boat, and it’s getting thicker by the minute.”

“I know, I know,” Lupin sighs. “I didn’t figure you were going to beach the boat, or I’d have brought more.”

Jigen resists the urge to rise to this verbal bait, but he does take advantage of close quarters under the table to put his heel firmly on the toe of Lupin’s shoe, pressing down harder when he tries to pull his foot away. 

“ _Ouch!_ Just a little joke!” Lupin squirms.

“Can’t we focus for five minutes?” Fujiko demands.

 _Everybody but Lupin can, when you’re in the room._ “I think we should just call the coast guard.”

“Yeah, about that,” she shifts back, lifting her hand to her mouth to pry at her nicely manicured pinkie nail with her teeth. 

_Shit._

“Is there something wrong with the radio equipment?” Goemon is the first to request clarity in the silence. 

JIgen leans a little harder on Lupin’s foot—once again Fujiko’s help came with too much of a catch. _Every friggin’ time._

“It doesn’t work,” Fujiko finally admits. “But it’s not like we can call the coast guard anyway, since we’re all wanted criminals! I didn’t think it would matter.”

Leave it to Lupin and Fujiko to get so focused on the job that they’d forget—or deliberately ignore—the dangers that put the treasure there in the first place. 

Under Jigen’s incredulous stare, Fujiko withers a little, then she firms herself up. “It’s not like there were dozens of boats to pick from just sitting around! The guy didn’t come clean about the radio until I’d half-won the thing already.”

“Aw,” Lupin folds immediately, despite Jigen crushing his toes. “You did your best, and we couldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

“Knock it off,” Jigen growls. “You should have mentioned it earlier.”

“Well,” Fujiko shapes her mouth into an attractive (to anyone else) pout. “I’m mentioning it now.”

“Great, then you’re on first shift. Pickaxe or chainsaw?” Jigen demands.

“Chainsaw?” Fujiko snaps back, not answering but questioning.

“We have to get the boat free. If you want to make the hole big enough for the sub to get through, too,” Jigen explains, dragging his pack of cigarettes out through the neck of his sweater. “Well, that’s up to you.”

-


	5. Chapter 5

The first ‘treasure’ that Lupin brings up is some kind of disembodied hand, withered but preserved by the cold salty water like some kind of mummy.

“Eugh!” Jigen is too tired to do more than weakly recoil from the disgusting thing, when Lupin waves it at him triumphantly. “What the hell is that? Throw it back before it thaws out and attracts bears!”

“Aw, don’t you want a _hand_?” Lupin offers, continuing to wave it at Jigen menacingly. “Besides, this could be the hand of Franklin himself, reaching out toward the Northwest Passage…”

Lupin gestures vaguely eastward with it, and Jigen leans on his pickaxe to look at him with disbelief. “I’m somehow sweating and _still_ cold and everything we dig up seems to freeze again before we make any real headway, and you’re trying to get us cursed.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff, Jigen,” Lupin taunts him, grinning. 

_Where does he get all the energy to be such a friggin’ nuisance?_ Jigen pulls the mitten he’s wearing over his glove off one hand to dig out his pack of cigarettes—he only has one left. _Countdown to murder, I guess._ “You always find a way. Haunted hotels, pharaoh curses…”

His hands feel stiff in the gloves he’s been wearing under the fur-lined mittens. He’s going to have to go in and warm up and dry off soon, which means he’ll lose progress as the ice refreezes. He finishes lighting the cigarette and tosses the empty pack on the ground to blow away in the bitter wind. “See, you’re already bringing bad luck, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tempt fate by waving corpse parts around.”

“Jeez, you’re so touchy,” Lupin gives the hand one last flourish, then jams the thing into the front pocket of his coat disgustingly.

“I don’t suppose you and Fujiko have done any real work over there since you haven’t found any real treasure?”

“Sure we have, we just haven’t brought it up yet.”

“So what’s the holdup?” Jigen doesn’t actually care anymore, but the sooner those two start chopping ice the sooner they can get out of here. It already feels like he’s been working for days. It’s getting lighter as the sun comes back up over the horizon, anyway.

“I have to send the sub back down in a slightly different position. I figured once the sun’s up, the ice won’t refreeze as fast.”

“What do you mean a different position?” Jigen demands. “I thought we had an easy reach!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lupin soothes. He puts a hand on Jigen’s shoulder, and Jigen double-checks that it’s actually Lupin’s and not the damn mummy-hand again. “We didn’t quite make it to the spot I wanted to, but we can still get the treasure.”

 _How can I not friggin’ worry about it?_ Jigen hopes Lupin is right about the ice not refreezing as quickly when the sun is up, so progress can speed up. The sweat is starting to cool on Jigen’s shoulders and he shivers. “Well, hurry up. It’s too friggin’ cold to mess around too long.”

“I know, I know,” Lupin soothes, squeezing his shoulder.

“Does this mean you’re done with the chainsaws?” Jigen demands.

“If I say yes and bring you one, do you promise not to use it on me?”

“What are you, ten?”

“Pinky swear?” Lupin produces the mummified hand from his pocket and offers it to Jigen, pinky-first. Jigen eyes it murderously before shoving Lupin away.

"You know we’ll run out of fuel eventually and lose heat in the cabin of the ship, right?”

“Well, probably not for a few days. And we can all huddle for warmth.”

Jigen drops the pickaxe and starts marching around the bow of the boat. _I’ll get my own chainsaw._

“Aw, don’t be that way,” Lupin tags along, half serious as always. “You know, as things go, this really isn’t all that bad.”

Jigen wishes Lupin was wrong, but he’s too tired for philosophy. He rounds the bow to see Fujiko hard at work with her chainsaw—and it surprises him. Clearly she’s having trouble muscling the narrow blade through the edge of the cleared hole they’ve already made in an attempt to widen it, but she has a determined expression on her face. It surprises him to see her downturned mouth below her goggles and fur-lined hood drawn tight around her cheeks. _Of course she’s really serious about treasure._

Lupin lets out a low, appreciative whistle next to him and Jigen’s surprise sours into irritation. “She looks good like that.”

Jigen grunts. He spots the second chainsaw on the ice near the hull of the ship, and turns to head for it. Footing on the ice is tricky. There’s a perpetual layer of slush on top that shifts underfoot, and the surface of the sea-ice is slick beneath. Jigen’s adjusted his gait, but he’s seen Goemon take at least as many headers as he has, and if any of them doesn’t have a bruised ass tomorrow, he’ll be genuinely surprised. Out here in the open, with the crystalline cold air, the sound of Fujiko’s chainsaw seems oddly muffled, and doesn’t carry to even the far side of the ship with the wind blowing the other way.

Jigen stops to pick up Lupin’s discarded chainsaw just as Fujiko turns hers off to consider the next angle she wants to cut. In the silence that follows, something seems to prickle at the edges of Jigen’s awareness. 

Lupin shifts closer to Fujiko, and Jigen follows, straining his ears and looking into the blinding white-gray distance. 

“What’s that sound?” Lupin asks. Something in their attitude alerts Fujiko as well. She steps in line next to them, trying to see what they’re both looking at.

“What noise?” she asks, wiping an ice-crusted glove on her goggles and only smearing the lens. “I don’t hear anything but the wind and my own teeth chattering.”

Jigen’s lost it in the wind, too, not entirely sure he didn’t imagine it. _Does being too cold make you hallucinate?_

“It’s like… a distant howling,” Lupin describes.

“Maybe it’s your conscience for getting us into this mess,” Jigen snaps, not wanting to indulge the idea of wolves, even for a second.

Lupin really looks like he hears something, though, and he isn’t messing around. Jigen strains his ears. Sure enough, between the gusts of wind, there’s a distant sound coming toward them—something like a motor drone, and maybe… yelling? _Come to think of it, what’s that dark spot on the horizon? It could almost be…_

**_“Luuuuuuuuuupiiiiiiiiiiiin…”_ **

“Crap,” Jigen’s eyes finally make sense of the rapidly approaching figure speeding toward them on a snowmobile and screaming—as always. “Pops. He’s crazy. How did he even _get_ here?”

Lupin’s face has just as much open disbelief as Fujiko’s. He grabs the chainsaw and puts it in Jigen’s hands. “Never underestimate the abilities of a deranged man, Jigen. Now, we better get back to work!”

“Now _you’re_ acting crazy!” Jigen snaps.

“Maybe he has a radio?” Fujiko theorizes. “Or we can at least use his snowmobile to get out of here if he used it to get _into_ here.”

Just for once, as Zenigata bears down on them driving the snowmobile one handed and waving his handcuffs, Jigen has to begrudgingly agree with Fujiko. He might actually be happy to see Pops for once.

“Oh, I agree with all of that, but this is our big break to get some treasure _and_ still get out of here,” Lupin says, just as calmly.

“You’ve really gone out of your mind.” Jigen drops the chainsaw again. “This plan stank from the start and it couldn’t have gone any more wrong.”

“Which is why we need a victory,” Lupin says. Zenigata is really getting close now, and Jigen hopes he hasn’t used up all the fuel in the snowmobile just getting here. “So, we’ll figure out how to take Pops hostage. It’s not like out here he can expect any backup, anyway.”

“Lupin! I got you now!” Zenigata is close enough to make out individual words and Jigen wonders if the Inspector really can’t contain himself or expects them to scramble for cover even out here in the middle of nowhere. _Honestly, I’m too tired to bother._

Jigen digs his gun out from under the layers of his coat and sweater, pulling the mitten off the top of his glove so he can pull the trigger. 

“Don’t hit the snowmobile!” Fujiko instructs, like Jigen’s an idiot.

“And don’t do any serious damage to Pops,” Lupin puts his two cents in. “It’s a long way from here to a hospital.”

Jigen grunts, drawing a bead—if he just puts a few in the ice in front of Zenigata, he’ll probably pull up rather than keep driving into it. “If you two are done with the backseat shooting…”

He’s lining up a shot in front of the nose of the snowmobile pitches down at a sharp angle and the whole thing goes end-over-end sending Zenigata flying toward them through the air and the snowmobile rolling several times with sickening thuds.

“Hey, that’s too much Jigen!” Lupin yelps.

“I didn’t even shoot at him yet!”

Zenigata slides to a halt on his face a few yards away, and that had to hurt—but with his usual resilience, he staggers dizzily to his feet with one hand on his head, digs another set of handcuffs out of his coat pocket. Weakly, he repeats, “You’re under arrest…”

“See? His head’s as hard as—”Fujiko yelps suddenly and underneath them the ice gives a sudden lurch. Jigen hurls himself backwards on instinct, grabbing Fujiko as he moves. He throws them both clear of the sudden ragged hole forming in the ice underfoot. He hears Lupin shout just as he feels solid ice underfoot in his mad scramble to haul himself and Fujiko clear.

“Lupin!” she yells in Jigen’s ear, and the real worry in her tone makes his heart take a plunge. When he turns around, there’s no sign of Lupin but the still-rippling water in the now-larger hole beneath the mini-sub, and the chainsaw he’d dropped finishes sinking into the water and quickly drops out of sight.

Jigen begins stripping his coat, mind turning into a white-wash of quick planning and calculations. Lupin’s clothes will waterlog quickly and the shock will hit him fast in water this cold. By the time he starts struggling it may already be too late. Jigen throws his hat aside starting to pull the sweater up over his head when suddenly a brown blur shoots by the corner of his vision, and then the sound of a splash and droplets of water splash his face and now-bare hands, bitingly cold.

“Zenigata!” Fujiko jams her hand over her mouth, muffling the answer to Jigen’s question— _what the hell?_ —before he can ask it.

 _Didn’t even hesitate_. Jigen tugs his sweater halfway off before Fujiko grabs his arm, weighing it down to stop him.

“Don’t you dare!” she says. 

“Lupin’s in there!” He snarls back, irritated by the delay.

“So is Zenigata, and I can’t see either of them anymore. The last thing we need—” Fujiko breaks off frustratedly, looking him so firmly in the eyes that the wishes he’d just jumped in with his hat still on. When she continues, her voice breaks just a little in distress. “It’ll be bad enough with just two, no matter…”

“They could die.”

“So could you, you asshole!”

It’s not like Jigen hasn’t already examined, considered, and discarded the risk as irrelevant, but Fujiko clamps onto his arm like a crazed octopus, fighting to keep him in place.

Suddenly the Inspector bursts back into view above the water level, pale and bloodless looking. He’s flailing clumsily with one hand and his lips are blue. Jigen jerks himself away from Fujiko and this time she lets him go as he lunges to help.

Zenigata struggles to find a solid edge to throw Lupin onto, and Jigen drops himself flat on the ice belly-first, grabbing two sodden handfuls of Lupin’s very cold clothes and hauling him up, passing him to Fujiko as gently as he can while moving quickly enough to make a grab for Zenigata when he starts to sink back down under the water, apparently having exhausted his strength in the struggle back to the surface. He’s _heavy_ and freezing to the touch, water soaking through the front of Jigen’s clothes as he strains to try and lever the heavier Inspector out of the water and onto the ice. 

He can feel the ice beneath his chest cracking and groaning, undermined by the water beneath and the weight pressing on it. If he says a quick prayer as he inches backwards, Jigen figures that's' between him and whatever spirit is listening. He can hear Fujiko shouting for Goemon and hopes _Goemon_ can hear it, too.

They have to get Lupin inside—hell, and Zenigata, too, if Jigen ever wins the war against gravity to get him out of the water. The ice under him gives an alarming crack and a lurch, and just as he manages to yank Zenigata up onto the edge of it, it starts to tip forward, threatening to dump them both back into the water.

Hands seize his ankles, and Jigen tightens his hold on Zenigata stubbornly refusing to let go while they slide backwards over the ice. The edge of something catches Jigen hard enough under the chin that he sees stars, and then he’s clear and the ice feels stable enough beneath him to stand on. His front and arms are soaked, and he feels the shock of cold even through the adrenaline hammering through his system. Zenigata’s eyes are open, but his face is pale leaning blue, and he looks pretty out of it.

 _Gotta get inside._ Jigen is barely thinking clearly himself, the moments all seeming to stretch out impossibly long. He starts to crouch to pick up Zenigata, his arms feeling leaden. A strong hand clamps on his shoulder, and Goemon’s deeply reassuring voice seems to be right in his ear.

“You get Lupin,” Goemon orders, taking control of the situation when he sees Jigen isn’t thinking at his clearest. “I’ll carry Zenigata.”

Jigen’s too numb to do anything but obey, so he leaves the heavier burden to Goemon and goes to hoist the sodden, shivering Lupin over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. If anything, he looks worse than Zenigata.

“Hey, buddy,” Lupin says in a weak, dreamy voice. “I really gotta hand it to you…”

Lupin somehow manages to wave the soaking semi-mummified hand—which he still has somehow!—in Jigen’s face, even as he struggles up onto the deck of the boat again. 

“Get that friggin’ thing away from me!” Jigen shouts through his own chattering teeth. “Or I’ll throw you back in!”

-


	6. Chapter 6

They don’t have to talk about it too much to negotiate what needs to be done. By the time they reach the main cabin, Jigen can’t stand the touch of his wet clothes on his skin anymore. Despite Lupin’s bad attempts at humor, Jigen’s sure it’s even worse for him.

He focuses on the task of peeling soaked clothes off Lupin’s gangly limbs. The skin beneath feels like cold ceramic, even to Jigen’s already cold hands—he’d left or lost his gloves and mittens down on the ice.

“Get every blanket you can find,” Goemon instructs Fujiko as Jigen works to peel the rest of Lupin’s clothes off over his boots. He shoves Lupin’s top half onto the bed, roughly piling the blankets on top of him to cover his bare skin as he tries to convince the wet, half-frozen and stiff shoelaces of his shoes to come undone fast enough for Jigen’s liking. Finally, frustration makes him dig around in the pile of Lupin’s dripping wet clothes for a pocket knife. Handfuls of soaked condiment packages, fishing line, spirit gum, condoms, and other shit that was probably meticulously ordered at one point come out before finally he finds the damn  _ hand _ which was probably cursed, but no sign of the pocket knife Jigen knows Lupin carries. Finally, he gives up.

“Goemon!”

He looks up to see that Goemon has propped Zenigata halfway up against the wall and gotten most of the inspector’s clothes off, but seems to be hesitating on the point of taking his boxers off.  _ It’s as if he’s never seen a dick before, every damn time. _ Jigen knows that’s completely untrue, but now’s not the time to try and logic Goemon out of his old-fashioned modesty values.

“I can’t get Lupin’s shoes off, trade me,” Jigen orders, swapping places. Both jobs take practically no time, but Lupin’s shoes wind up significantly worse off than Zenigata’s boxers. He tosses all of Zenigata’s sodden clothes—he seems to have lost his hat, trenchcoat, and shoes in the water—into a pile with Lupin’s in the middle of the cabin. They’re already soaking a wet spot into the carpet.

Fujiko returns with an armload of blankets at last and stops dead in her tracks to stare impolitely at Zenigata’s naked body. Zenigata’s pretty out of it but he belatedly reacts to her open staring with a faint protest and a clumsy gesture to cover up, so Jigen grabs the top blanket off the pile and covers as much of the inspector as he can with it. It seems inadequate to the task.  _ Turns out Zenigata’s pretty big all over. _

“C’mon, Pops, into bed,” Jigen guides Zenigata’s unsteady steps toward the bed where Goemon is rubbing Lupin’s feet to restore circulation and dry them off while Lupin protests ineffectively about being ticklish. Jigen shoves him down onto the bed and covers both of their bodies over with even more blankets from the stack Fujiko brought in. The blankets don’t quite seem capable of covering everyone over in one layer, so Jigen just keeps putting them on until he can’t see any parts sticking out. 

“You too,” Goemon orders.

“What?”

“You’re soaked and shivering, Jigen,” Goemon points out.

Jigen can’t protest, he’s suddenly wracked with a major tremor that seems to shake him all the way to his bones.  _ Probably the adrenaline wearing off. _ “I think I left my hat on the ice.”

Goemon’s expression hardens, and when Jigen backs up a step, he runs into Fujiko. They corner him neatly, and Goemon starts undoing his shirt buttons with agile, efficient fingers. 

“Well you could have gotten me dinner, first,” Jigen tries, weakly.

“I picked your hat up,” Fujiko says. “I knew you’d miss it like a limb. It’s soaked, like everything else.”

Goemon peels Jigen’s wet shirt off his shoulders, and it joins the pile on the floor. He seizes the button on Jigen’s slacks next, almost brutally as if he expects protest.

“Alright, I can get that myself,” Jigen says, feeling hot up the back of his neck as Goemon manhandles his pants anyway.

“Hurry up, the longer you’re cold the greater the chance of frostbite.” 

Jigen finishes pushing his pants off his hips, feeling deeply aware of how close behind him Fujiko is standing, even if it’s stupid not to be practical about this. 

“I’ll rig something up to get the clothes drying over the heating vent,” Fujiko says, grabbing his sopping pants-underwear combination out of Jigen’s hand. He can  _ feel _ the hair on the back of his neck standing up. “Then I’ll get in, too.”

“In?” Jigen asks, just before Goemon engulfs him bodily and hauls his shivering carcass into the mess of blankets. Jigen yelps at the first contact of his skin to—whoever’s, it’s hard to make sense of the limbs under the blankets except some are just ice cold, even to his freezing fingers. Jigen at least is shivering to warm himself up. Neither Lupin or Zenigata seem to be, and no heat has really accumulated under the covers yet.

Goemon jams them all together into a pile of some clinging limbs, some faint protest, and everything actually gets  _ colder _ for a time. Jigen shivers frantically with at least one unidentified body part that he’ll be glad never to have a solid identification for rubbing against him. Goemon is working on rubbing warmth back into Zenigata’s hands, and Jigen takes over on Lupin’s icy fingers, working them ceaselessly between his palms until the friction annoys them both and he can feel the sting in his own hands.

Fujiko yelps suddenly, a soft thud on the carpet making Jigen raise his head and Lupin burst into goofy laughter.

Her eyes are wide, Lupin’s jacket in her hands as she stares at something out of sight on the floor. “There’s a  _ hand _ in here!”

“Throw it out,” Jigen says, grabbing hold of Lupin when he begins struggling to get out of the blankets and protect his stupid cursed treasure.

“No, Fuji!” Lupin protests.

“It’s thawing out,” Fujiko complains. 

“Place it somewhere cold,” Goemon suggests.

“Like back in the ocean,” Jigen adds, tightening his hold on Lupin.  _ He must at least be feeling a little better if he’s kicking me like that. _

“I don’t really want to touch it.” She bends down anyway, and when she straightens up she has a bundle wrapped up in someone’s boxers. She carries it out of the cabin, and Jigen can only hope he’ll never see it again.

“Hold  _ still _ ,” Jigen pins Lupin down and shoves him against the immovable bulk of Zenigata-and-Goemon too tired to fight him anymore. Lupin finally seems to accept his fate, relaxing in Jigen’s arms. His body feels a little warmer, at least, and he seems a little more  _ there _ , if really tired. 

“Hey, is Pops okay?” Lupin wonders, and then gives a violent shiver. Jigen pulls him closer, and tries not to feel too worried about it. Lupin’s awake and talking, that means he’s going to pull through, based on previous evidence. He can feel Lupin’s heart beating against his chest, and that probably means he’s okay.

“He’s even more out of it than you are,” Jigen says.

“He’ll feel better when he warms up,” Goemon says, from the other side of Zenigata. “So will you.”

Lupin starts to reply then stutters to nothing around his chattering teeth. He seems to soften a little against Jigen’s chest, probably exhaustion. Jigen rubs his back, half exasperated and half fond. Time stretches. Jigen must sleep or at least drop close to it, feeling paradoxically warm and safe in the overcrowded bed even though several of them nearly died. He rouses faintly when Fujiko joins them, just as naked as the rest of them. She shifts into place to wrap herself around Lupin’s back, and it seems to finally quiet the last of his shivering.

-

It’s Zenigata who surfaces first, sitting up abruptly with a sudden awareness that runs sharp contrast to how utterly relaxed he’d seemed against Jigen’s back just a second ago.  _ Here comes the freakout. _

Instead of that, after a moment to orient himself, Zenigata drops the unexpected. “Did we beat the storm out?”

_ Storm? _ Jigen hopes Zenigata is having a war flashback or something.

“What storm?” Goemon is the first after Jigen to come to full consciousness, though Jigen can feel Fujiko starting to wake up too before she kicks him hard in the shin as she stretches.

“Yeah,” Zenigata definitely sounds a little too awake, though as the rest of them start to wake up and poke their heads out of the blankets, he looks increasingly more flustered as he becomes aware of exactly how many bare bodies are in contact with his own. “I was just ahead of a storm… some kinda polar low or something. The locals tried to talk me out of coming after you.”

“You came to catch me in an arctic hurricane?” Lupin finally seems to rouse, stretching almost luxuriously between Jigen and Fujiko, like he’s trying to take advantage of his chance to rub on every available part.  _ It’s like his wildest dream came true instead of a near-death experience. _ Fujiko and Jigen both shove him away at the same time, evicting him out of the space between them. “Pops, you  _ do _ care!”

Jigen can feel how stiff Lupin is in the way he’s moving carefully and testing his range of motion. Jigen doesn’t exactly feel great himself, his shoulders a stiff and screaming mass from the effort of spending hours using the pickaxe instead of sleeping.

“Well, we’re stuck in the ice,” Jigen points out, rubbing his eyes. “We’re not outrunning anything.”

The idea of going back outside and trying to chip the boat out again just makes him ache all over. 

“Stuck?” Zenigata deflates a little in concern.

“Don’t ask,” Jigen pats Lupin’s chest, then checks each of his hands under the covers while Lupin humors Jigen for pawing him over. They both look pink and healthy and feel warm. Probably, Lupin isn’t going to lose any fingers. “Did you bring a radio?”

Maybe if he keeps pretending it’s another normal day, the longer they’ll stay out of handcuffs and making progress toward getting out of this nightmare. Then again as a sudden craving hits, Jigen remembers he’s out of cigarettes. 

“I brought a—” Zenigata starts, and Jigan can see in real time when it hits him that  _ he’s _ naked, too. He flushes and turns pink all down his shoulders and Jigen feels his companions shift in unison like a pack of hunting animals sensing a weak deer. 

“—Sat phone,” Zenigata finishes, leaning away as Fujiko sits all the way up and lets the blanket fall away from her chest to bring her assets to bear. “Where are my clothes?”

Lupin giggles obscenely, and Jigen rolls his eyes. Zenigata should know better by now.

“The ones that aren’t at the bottom of the ocean were soaked,” Goemon is keeping his composure remarkably. “Fujiko hung them up to dry.”

“They should be pretty dry by now,” Fujiko says, putting her hands primly on top of her knees, looking across the cabin at her makeshift clotheslines suspense d over the heater. Jigen can see his hat—much worse for the wear—affixed limply to the line with an honest to god clothespin she found somewhere. He sighs.

“The phone wasn't in your coat, was it, Pops?” Lupin is the first to ask the obvious question.

“No, it was on the snow cat.” Zenigata reaches up and rubs the back of his head; his front has a pattern of bruises under his chin and over his collarbone from his crash landing, and his hair is sticking up at odd angles from drying with his head in the blanket pile. “It should still be okay.”

“That’s a relief,” Fujiko says. “We can just go get it.”

There’s a long pause while everyone in the group decides if they’re going to be the first brave soul to go ass-out across the room to get their clothes. Finally, it’s Lupin who throws the blankets off, half-revealing everybody underneath to a chorus of yelps. Zenigata grabs for it but by then it’s too late. Now that he’s not cold, Jigen is privately impressed, but makes a note never to mention it ever in his life. He grunts at the change in air temperature even if the room is relatively warm, and then it’s a mad scramble for clothes.

Jigen lets the rest of them fight it out instead, figuring his clothes will still be there when everyone else is done. Instead, he rifles around in Lupin’s suitcase and then Fujiko’s bag in the hope of cigarettes. He finds a few spare in a tampon case and plunders two while no one is looking—payback for the one he leant Fujiko earlier, with interest. Besides, she should know better than to expect such a simple trick to work on thieves.

He takes his lighter back, too, and goes to grab whatever clothes are left on the lines after the frenzy has cleared up, lighting a cigarette while he pulls on his shirt, first. There’s no underwear left, and he’s pretty sure the pair Fujiko used to get rid of the curse hand wasn’t his so somebody hasn’t been too particular.

“So how long before the storm gets here?” Jigen asks, stuffing his legs into his pants and giving his dick a careful tuckback away from the zipper before he does it up, jamming his shirt tails in so the zipper metal and button back won’t be against his bare skin.

“It was only a few hours behind me,” Zenigata says, eyes on the ceiling as if to avoid eye-contact until everyone is fully clothed.  _ It’s not like he’s never seen us all naked before. _ Zenigata has burst in on them in any number of compromising situations.  _ Usually  _ he _ has all his clothes on, though.  _

“We’ve been asleep for a few hours,” Goemon points out.

As if in answer, the wind outside picks up into a loud howl, and Jigen sighs in resignation. “Arlight. We may be stuck until it passes. Fujiko, you’re sure you can’t fix the radio?”

“I can look,” she offers. 

“Goemon and I will go pick up our tools and equipment off the ice—” he glances at Fujiko who nods. He figures that means it didn’t all fall into the water. A quick assessment of Lupin and Zenigata reveals that the down coat that Lupin had been wearing is still too wet to wear, and Zenigata is in shirtsleeves and shoeless.

Jigen surrenders his oversized found-sweater to him in gratitude for saving Lupin’s cursed ass. The look of thanks he gets from the shivering inspector is too much—like no one’s ever done him a genuine favor before. Jigen jams his soggy hat back on his head so he doesn’t have to look, and when Zenigata finally gets the sweater on it’s straining across his chest and shoulders, and too short in the arms, but better than nothing.

“Pops, you and Lupin take stock of what we have. Food, clothes, see if there’s any spare fuel and what the fuel level is at in the tank,” Jigen instructs.

Lupin gives him a long look, like he hadn’t expected Jigen to take charge.  _ It’s not like I want to! _ Jigen shoots back a no-arguments-you-almost-died(again) glare, and then everyone falls into motion when Lupin seems to accept his lead.

Jigen has to stomp into his discarded boots while Goemon stands by serenely. “What I wouldn’t give to have your friggin’ composure.”

Goemon’s brows arch faintly, and he looks back at Jigen instead of following Pops and Lupin with his gaze. “You didn’t seem to lose it.”

Ahead, Jigen sees Zenigata reach out and catch Lupin by the elbow to stop him for a quick conversation that Jigen can guess the gist of, because for all his flaws, Zenigata isn’t afraid to wear his warmth publicly or display concern for others. 

“I’m barely keeping it together,” Jigen admits, because Goemon won’t hold it against him. “You’re okay, right?”

“I didn’t get wet.”

A practical answer, like always. Jigen straightens up and accepts the answer for what it is. “Thanks.”

Goemon’s eyebrows perfectly describe the question he doesn’t ask in their ascent toward his elegant hairline. 

“For your help down there.”

-


	7. Chapter 7

Even just a few minutes outside is enough. He and Goemon manage to drag the snowmobile to safety using the launch gantry for the mini-sub, getting it up onto the deck and tacked down under a tarp for protection. The snow and wind are a dangerous combination, cold enough to feel cutting against any exposed patch of skin. It’s already accumulating on the ice at an alarming rate, piling in drifts against the hull of the ship.

There’s still a dark, ragged patch where Lupin went through below, but it’s already rimed over with thin, dangerous ice. Jigen makes a note to avoid the whole area. The situation feels insidiously dangerous, the isolation and threat just from the very hostility of the environment.

“What is it?” Goemon asks, raising his voice over the wind. He leans in over Jigen’s shoulder, providing a brief protection from the wind at his back. Jigen realizes he’s been looking down over the railing of the boat longer than he thought.

“How long do you think this is going to last?” Jigen asks.

Goemon is quiet for a long time, as if seriously calculating the results based on prior knowledge or something. Then, instead of an answer, Jigen feels the soft pressure of Goemon’s hand at the small of his back. It’s reassuring, without being stifling.

“I just don’t really know how to handle this,” Jigen admits. The pressure on his back increases, maybe in sympathy. He reaches back and presses his own hand between them, somewhere against Goemon’s middle, to return the reassurance. 

“It’s not the sort of problem that you can shoot.”

Jigen turns to give Goemon a dirty look over one shoulder, but of course he’s right. “I suppose you could cut it, huh?”

Goemon’s answering smirk is small and secretive, offered in solidarity. “We have always gotten through our challenges before.”

It’s the truth but Jigen is all-too-aware of the razor’s edge it puts them on. No one has a perfect record forever, even when it comes to survival.  _ When you make a living pulling as many dangerous stunts as we do, maybe  _ especially _ when it comes to survival.  _

“We do have a pretty good track record,” Jigen admits at last. He shivers as the frigid air pushes the driving snow down the neck of his coat. The way flakes are clinging to Goemon’s eyelashes would almost be cute if it wasn’t sticking and freezing in Jigen’s beard in a clump, too. “Between you and me,  _ could _ you get us out of the ice?”

Goemon gives Jigen a mysterious look and doesn’t answer the question at all. Jigen accepts that he’ll never know. “Let’s go inside.”

-

“Here’s the situation,” Lupin looks a little dark under his eyes when they all cram into the tiny Galley, Zenigata towering over them in the doorway because he doesn’t fit anywhere else. “We have the sat phone, but no solid connection because of the heavy cloud cover.”

“That’s a big ‘if’ anyway,” Fujiko says, chewing a nail again. “Do satellites have coverage this far north?” 

“It’s supposed to, the network said it would,” Zenigata says. “If there’s a clear line to the satellite, it should work. The network has satellites in low orbit, so when one’s overhead and the skies are clear…”

“What about the radio?” Jigen asks.

Fujiko’s face tells him everything he needs to know. “There’s nothing inside it. It’s like the previous owner just glued the face back on an empty hole, the dirty cheat.”

Zenigata shifts his weight, like he’s anxious to right the wrong. “That’s dangerous.”

_ So’s jumping into the arctic ocean to save your mortal enemy.  _ Jigen keeps his thoughts to himself.

“He definitely misrepresented the sale,” Fujiko agrees, looking suddenly at Zenigata for confirmation. “Can I sue for that?”

“You won it in a poker game!” Jigen protests. “What did you expect?”

“It took a lot of work,” Fujiko complains, slouching lower in her chair. “And it’s not as good as he said it was.”

“I think that poker winnings are subject to caveat emptor.” Zenigata sounds tired as he tries to put a cap on the argument. 

“And you cheated anyway,” Jigen adds.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Lupin cuts in, rocking his chair back onto two legs and then letting it tap back down to all four for emphasis. “It means we’re stuck here until we can get a clear signal but we have a pretty good chance of getting out of here.”

“So, we just have to wait it out?” Goemon asks for the ‘but’ they can all hear in Lupin’s tone. 

“That’s the idea,” Lupin says, swiveling his head to look at Zenigata, next. “Did you get any idea from the locals how long these storms usually last, Pops?”

Here, Zenigata’s confidence vanishes, and he uncrosses one of his arms from where it’s been folded over his chest to hook a big hand behind his neck and rub there, looking vulnerable. “I didn’t think to ask. A few hours, maybe? A few days?”

“How’s the fuel doing on this thing?” Jigen asks, seeing the first problem.

“Well, obviously, a few hours isn’t a problem,” Lupin says. “A few days… might be.”

“We’ll run out of heat.” Jigen could laugh, except it’s not funny.  _ Freezing to death in June. Just our luck. _

“We have plenty of food and the desalination system is working fine,” Lupin points out. “And even without heat, we’ll be okay for a while if we conserve body heat together.”

He looks at Fujiko when he says it, but it’s obvious he means all of them. It’s true to a point, but Jigen’s had enough of cozying up to Fujiko for one lifetime.

“Isn’t there anything else we can do?” Jigen demands, turning halfway in his chair to nail Zenigata with a stare from under the brim of his hat. “Pops, didn’t you make some kind of plan for rescue if you got stuck out here?”

“I brought the sat phone,” Zenigata says.

“Come to think of it,” Lupin starts, in a sliding-playful tone that asks for his ego to be tickled. “How’d you find us, Pops?”

Zenigata looks briefly surprised by the question, blinking his long eyelashes until it finally processes what it is that Lupin’s asking. Jigen can hardly ever tell if Zenigata is a lucky idiot or he just comes across that way because his mind is going a million miles an hour in a dozen directions at any given time. “I figured it had to be this. What else is out here? And, uh—”

He pauses while they all stare and digs under the too-tight sweater to come up with a well-mashed and wrinkly pamphlet that still looks a little damp and crumbly. “I know they found the  _ Erebus _ last year, and that meant they’d be trying to find the wreck of the  _ Terror _ . Plus, Franklin’s diary went missing from the Manitoba research museum while it was on loan for study.”

Jigen, Fujiko, and Goemon swivel their heads to look at Lupin, who lowers his chair legs back to the floor with another tap. 

“You were behind that smash-and-grab job?” Fujiko demands, while Jigen tries to figure out  _ when _ Lupin had the time to rob a museum in Canada without him.  _ He needs a friggin’ babysitter. Can’t look away for a minute. _

Lupin works up indignant outrage while Jigen indulges himself with the idea of keeping him on a leash. “Of  _ course _ not, guys! As if I would ever be so uncreative. I just found out who stole it and took it from  _ them _ .”

“I knew it!” Zenigata crows, almost proudly.

“Yeah, well, the whole point is moot now anyway. Didn’t the damn diary go into the water when you fell in?” Jigen asks, remembering Lupin had been keeping it in his coat pocket.

“What!” Zenigata yelps. “That’s a valuable historical artifact.”

“Which is  _ why _ I left it on the boat, safe and sound,” Lupin reveals. “But, between you and me, it makes for pretty dated reading. Really, the only juicy parts are where he and his crew start getting into trouble.”

“I’ll have to confiscate it and return it to the museum,” Zenigata grumbles.

“How long do we have heat?” Goemon asks, bringing the subject back around after indulging this tangent for as long as his patience allowed. 

“About twenty-four hours if we’re careful,” Lupin says. “If we turn off heat to all but one of the cabins and turn everything else drawing from the generator off, we can probably stretch it further.”

“We should take steps to minimize fuel consumption immediately, then,” Goemon decides.

“Can I at least make a pot of coffee?” Jigen asks, feeling the immediate implications of at least another twenty four hours without nicotine.

“Well, the good news is the kitchen runs on propane so we can still cook even if we turn off most of the rest of the ship’s systems,” Lupin says.

“What’s the  _ bad _ news? Jigen demands, jogging his foot irritably under the table as his nerves all start to rankle out of place.

Lupin holds up a ratty, green-labeled container that he picks up off the counter. “We only have instant decaf.”

-

“I’m sorry,” Lupin tells Jigen for the third time as they work together in the tiny machine room space in the keel where all the maintenance valves and cutoff switches for the ships are inconveniently located.

Jigen sucks down the last sip of his second cup of disgusting decaffeinated sludge and wedges the empty cup in among the pipes to free up his hands, telling himself addiction is all in his mind.  _ Killing Lupin with my bare hands would feel good, but it wouldn’t get me a cigarette. _ He’s actually starting to wonder if he wouldn’t have fared better if he just froze to death in the plane by his own stubborn insistence that first night in Nunavik.  _ At least then they’d have buried me and I wouldn’t get eaten by a passing polar bear. _

Jigen struggles to turn off the valve that sends heat to other parts of the ship—they’re stiff and his hands are cold, and it’s hard to get a good grip with his gloves on. “Next time you decide to go on a friggin’ polar expedition, you’re on your own.”

Lupin holds the flashlight a little higher for Jigen, though it means he can’t see Lupin’s expression anymore with the glare in his eyes. “Well, what kind of caper would it be without a little danger and excitement? You like a thrill as much as I do, Jigen. Admit it.”

“I’d rather someone was shooting at us or we were outrunning rabid dogs or boobie traps,” Jigen snaps, his grip on the lever sliding again as he tries to wrench it into the closed position. He growls in frustration and pulls his gloves off with his teeth. The air down here is cold enough for their breath to fog. When Jigen continues throwing his back into pulling the cutoff, his voice is muffled by the gloves between his teeth. “For wunff can we haff a caper phat ends wiff uff on a phile off money havin’ drinfs on ffhe beach?”

The valve finally gives and turns off, and when Jigen relaxes his grip his hands ache numbly, the pink impression of the handle pressed into his cold-pale palms. He flexes his fingers and pulls the gloves out of his mouth to jam them into his pocket. “Or at least one where we don’t run out of something vital right in the middle?”

He starts to move on to the next valve, but Lupin reaches out with his free hand and catches Jigen’s numb fingers, pulling him back.

“What _ now _ ?” Jigen snaps.

Lupin pulls him a step closer. “Your hands are cold.”

“Everything is cold, dumbass,” Jigen growls, but Lupin sets the flashlight down amongst the pipes and wiring, scattering the light at a crazy angle. He pulls Jigen’s unresisting arm closer, and then tucks his hand into the warm breast of his coat, against his chest. He reaches for Jigen’s other hand, too, to share warmth. Jigens protests fade into confusion, thoughts scattered by the intimacy and kindness of the gesture.

“We  _ do _ have heists like that,” Lupin says, a little more softly now that they’re close enough for the fog of their breathing to mix. Jigen can feel it condensing in his beard, on his eyelashes, but all he can do is watch Lupin manipulate his other hand. The slow pulse beating in his fingertips is either Lupin’s heartbeat or circulation returning to his extremities. He can feel the back of his neck heating up. “But usually at the end you start to complain that there’s too many girls on the beach.”

Before Jigen can argue, Lupin lifts Jigen’s other hand to his mouth, pulling the first three fingers into the shocking warmth within. The heat of his soft, willing tongue takes a second to penetrate the set-in cold, but the shock of it reaches Jigen’s brain and races down his spine lightning fast. Lupin shifts his weight and pins Jigen’s slackening body against the pipes as the almost-pain of rewarming spreads into his fingers. Whatever he’d been about to say blanks out of Jigen’s mind, and the hand inside Lupin’s coat seizes a fistfull of Lupin’s shirt and holds on.

Without conscious intent to, he hauls Lupin closer and the motion briefly jams his fingers deep enough in Lupin’s mouth to gag him, but he only pulls back enough to laugh around them, a deep vibration against the pads of Jigen’s fingers as he crowds closer. Both of Lupin’s hands grip Jigen’s ass briefly in a reminder that Jigen’s hands are on him without being held there at all. Suddenly deeply aware that he’s not wearing underwear, Jigen gasps, a crazed puff of steam billowing out of him into the crooked light when Lupin nudges a bony knee between his thighs.

He’s hard already, goddamn it, his body the worst liar when Lupin’s involved. “Lupin.”

It’s not the protest he intended, instead gasping out of Jigen as Lupin gets one hand on him through his pants, palm against his cock in the unforgiving confines of his clothes.

“Mmm?” Lupin works the flat of his tongue against the pads of Jigen’s fingers, bare friction and plenty-enough suggestion of how it would feel on his cock.

_ We can’t— _ Jigen’s thoughts make a lunge for the surface even as Lupin gives his cock a rough stroke that insists they  _ can _ , they  _ will _ , and Jigen swallows air, drops his head down on Lupin’s shoulder and pushes his fingers deeper into Lupin’s mouth in rhythm with the rough way Lupin’s pressing and stroking his cock through his pants.

The urgency of it unbuttons Jigen’s composure and lets his desire for this slip free, leaving him breathing rough and hard as Lupin makes encouraging noises into the baffle of his fingers, electric and raw so he can  _ feel _ it. Lupin doesn’t tease it out, he batters relentlessly against Jigen’s stamina until it gives way and Jigen’s knees go weak. When he cums, it’s only Lupin’s weight shoving against him and the knee still between his thighs that keeps him upright as it pours out of him in a rush. Lupin’s grip refuses to ease until Jigen’s completely spent and breathless, aware of the spreading damp patch on his pants and sticking them to his body.

Lupin draws his mouth off of Jigen’s fingers slowly, pressing a kiss to the tips before wrapping Jigen’s hand in his still-gloved one to keep the cold from penetrating again too quickly in the refractory period where Jigen’s eyes refocus and his balance rallies. 

“You like the thrill of it, too,” Lupin asserts, grinning brilliantly at him.


	8. Chapter 8

The storm doesn’t pass in the first day, and Jigen is glad they took the time for some precautions when they all huddle into the main cabin that night. It’s a relief to be warm and still able to have a little personal space.

“I’m bored,” Lupin complains into his dinner—subpar american cup noodles spiced up (at least in Lupin’s case) with a little bit of everything he could find in the spice cabinet. It hadn’t smelled appealing, but it had prevented Fujiko from just stealing his food so she wouldn’t have to prepare her own. 

“We could play poker?” she suggests, passing a sly glance at Zenigata—probably to try and read the brand on his wristwatch. _Too bad for her, it looks like a ten year service gift from the ICPO._ It’s unlikely that it still works after getting submerged in the ocean. When Jigen looks back at Fujiko, he can see she’s come to the same conclusion and she’s less interested now.

“Does anyone have any cards?” Jigen asks anyway. It’s better to keep Lupin occupied if they want to keep the situation from devolving any worse than it has already. So far, everyone still has pants on—even if Jigen’s have a stiff spot he’s still working on scrubbing out with his nails every time no one is looking at him—so it’s better than it could be.

“I didn’t bring any,” Fujiko sighs. “Why aren’t there any on the ship already? You’d think sailors would get bored out here. It’s not like there’s much to look at.”

“I do not think there was much cause for them to expect to be stuck in the ice,” Goemon says.

The cabin is getting a little too warm with five bodies in the close space—it’s ostensibly the captain’s quarters, but overall still rustic and functionally sparse. It’s got just one bed instead of stacked bunks, a couch (Jigen is occupying the whole thing in an attempt to colonize it as his own sleeping space for later, though it’s the hardest thing he’s ever laid on that could still be called a couch.)

“Well, even if they weren’t stuck, they couldn’t have been working _all_ the time.” Fujiko points out, pausing to look around for any promising source of entertainment.

Zenigata is sitting carefully apart, settled backward in the fixed-to-the-floor desk chair so he can face the center of the room, though so far he seems to be holding himself back from getting involved in the conversation. He’s just—watching, guarded and careful. Jigen figures his world was probably rocked by waking up naked in a bed full of enemies who would have been better served to leave him to freeze in the water.

“We could try ‘never-have-I-ever’?” Lupin suggests.

“No,” Jigen vetoes that immediately. “It’s not fun if you don’t have any damn shame.”

“It’s fun for _me_ ,” Lupin pouts. He finishes his dinner and sets the empty carton aside on the floor. There’s still a wet patch in the center of the carpet where they’d first left all their wet clothes. 

“What’s in the desk?” Goemon asks, seeming to animate suddenly from where he’s been doing his best to meditate. By now,’ in a room with too many people that’s slightly too warm’, shouldn’t be a challenge, but there’s probably a lot to meditate on. Goemon slowly rotates his gaze toward Zenigata when he doesn’t get an immediate answer. 

Animating slowly, as if the attention is unwarranted, Zenigata looks briefly unnerved to have the whole group focused on him. “Huh?”

“The desk, behind you,” Lupin repeats, suddenly interested.

“Well, I have no idea,” Zenigata says, and then begins a methodical rifling of the drawers that still keeps most of the contents out of sight.

Jigen finds himself sitting up, curious in spite of himself. It mostly looks like old paperwork and scraps of notes. Zenigata does come up with a few Canadian coins, some ossified and crumbling rubber bands, double-a batteries with their ends powdering and crusted from corrosion. By now, everyone’s leaning in over his shoulders to see. There, in the last drawer, under some empty matchbooks and a tin of pipe tobacco that Jigen accepts when Zenigata wordlessly offers it—an old blue pack of Bicycle playing cards. Lupin crows victoriously.

“The game is on, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, as Zenigata undoes the paper flap on the box. What comes out is not just a deck of cards, once Zenigata taps those into his palm. A small, flat key rattles loose onto the spartan desktop as they all lean in to peer at it.

“What’s that to?” Fujiko asks.

“Who knows.” Jigen reaches for it, but Lupin is faster than he and Fujiko both and swoops it off the desktop to examine it.

Zenigata decides not to protest, instead finishing his inspection of the deck of cards. “It’s missing a Joker.”

“Well there’s plenty of games we can play without,” Lupin says, trying to keep the key away from Fujiko until he can properly examine it. It requires a few truly impressive contortions, before Lupin stretches up on his tiptoes and holds his hand all the way up in an old playground maneuver that doesn’t work. Fujiko socks him in the gut.

“It’s my boat, so it’s my key,” she says as he crumples. When his hand is in reach she starts to pry it open as the other three people the room watch only half-interested.

“It’s probably just to some old crusty footlocker,” Lupin grunts, trying to contort himself out of her reach again. 

_Well, at least he’s not bored anymore._ Jigen turns to Zenigata while Lupin and Fujiko wrestle over the key. “We can play plenty of games without jokers.”

“Sure,” Zenigata says, his eyes still glued to the devolving pile of Fujiko-intertwined-with-Lupin and Jigen wishes it was still a novelty.

“What about strip-poker?” Jigen suggests, to snap him out of it.

“Yes!” Lupin says, as Fujiko smears him across the carpet. 

“No,” Zenigata and Goemon say a second later, lasering in on Jigen who can’t help his broad grin at getting the reaction he wants.

“It’s too dangerous to shed articles of clothing for a game,” Goemon says, blushing adorably to his ears. “There is still the danger of frostbite.”

“Aww, we’d warm you—” Lupin grunts as Fujiko elbows him, finally prying his hand open to reveal his empty palm. He continues, airlessly, “up!”

“Ugh!” Fujiko gets off him disgustedly, giving up on the key for now. 

“It’s inappropriate for me to gamble on duty,” Zenigata says, shuffling the cards. After a pause, he adds, “Uh, if—If you wanted everyone to play.”

“Of course I did, Pops,” Lupin picks himself up, stretching out the places Fujiko had kinked him up. “It’s no fun if we don’t _all_ play, and what do you mean, ‘on duty’?”

“I’m guarding you!” Zenigata says, with utmost sincerity. “You’re still under arrest you know.” 

Lupin’s features register first surprise, then crumple into genuine laughter, so real and earnest that even Jigen feels the urge to join in, though he stops the sound behind his grin and tips his hat lower over his eyes, hearing even Goemon’s quiet chuckle.

“Okay,” Lupin giggles. “Of course.”

-

They play cards with their captor—Fujiko grumbling about preferring poker to the game Zenigata teaches them, where there’s no stakes on the table. He calls it ‘Golf’, but Jigen can’t find any way to relate it to the sport except the goal is to get the lowest score. After the demonstration of how to play, Pops doesn’t win a single round.

“Do you get a lot of time to play cards?” Lupin pries, arranging himself next to Zenigata so that he can try peeking at Zenigata’s cards. Zenigata returns the favor, and he seems to be able to memorize his hand after one look before laying them flat on the table and playing accordingly. Lupin has to keep checking what he has. It’s not the first time one of Lupin’s plans has worked out more in Zenigata’s favor than his own. 

“Solitaire,” Zenigata admits, eyes on the first round of revealed cards as if calculating his odds.

“That’s sad, Pops,” Lupin says, nudging Zenigata with a companionable elbow. Jigen takes advantage of the pause in game play to miss nicotine. He’s aware of the tin of pipe tobacco in his pocket, so close but so far.

There was some paper in the desk, and Jigen is almost starting to feel desperate enough.

“It’s not,” Zenigata defends. “It keeps your mind sharp and I had to abandon too many mah jongg sets. Cards are cheaper.” 

“That’s _really_ sad,” Lupin grumbles.

Jigen can’t remember the last time he was so desperate for Nicotine. Maybe in high school, when he was still stealing his father’s pipe tobacco and rolling cigarettes from newspaper that left telltale grey ink smudges on his fingers and lips. That sparks a thought. “Leave me out next hand.”

Everyone’s been dropping in and out all night, as they need to get up and move around, tend to needs. Jigen’s got a full bladder and the vague idea he saw some parchment paper in the kitchen. Desperation makes that seem like the best plan. While in the head, he wonders how long civility will last if they run out of food or toilet paper.

He scrounges around in the kitchen—what he’d seen turns out to be waxed paper, and experience from his youth suggests trying to use it as rolling paper would just laminate the tobacco. Movement from the hall catches his eye, and a flash of red hair held down beneath a stocking cap arouses Jigen’s suspicions. He leans out of the galley in time to see Fujiko disappear through the hatch onto the top deck.

By now he has an intuition for when she’s planning something. He follows her up onto the deck, keeping his steps silent and sticking to cover to get an idea of what she’s up to. She doesn’t hesitate as she approaches the covered snow-mobile, and he figures her plan out before she starts knocking the snow off the tarp.

“Shoulda guessed,” Jigen lets his next step fall heavy as he moves out of cover. He didn’t put on a coat and the storm winds are blowing enough to cut through the layers of his dirty, salt-scratchy clothes so he keeps his hands in his pockets. 

“Do you ever not stick your nose in?” Fujiko looks around only long enough to be sure Jigen doesn’t have his gun in his hands. The half-wild look of defiance in her eyes is one he recognizes. She needs out; and she’ll go _through_ whatever she has to to get there.

Jigen doesn’t plan on getting a hole through his body to try and stop her today. Probably, if she makes it out, she’ll send someone back for them. _And if anyone can make it out of any situation, it’s Fujiko._ She pulls the cover off, revealing that she’s already affixed a pack with supplies to the carrying rig on the back. 

“He’d treat you better if you came through for him sometimes,” Jigen says, moving into action and stepping past her to fetch the rigging on the gantry to help her hook it up so she can lower the snowmobile to the ice.

Fujiko squints at Jigen eyeing him sourly as she affixes her half of the cables. “Are you being nice to _me_? Cause you suck at it.”

“Just telling the truth,” Jigen steps back to let her run the controls herself. 

Her face goes firm as she works them, and lowers the snowmobile safely to the ice. He follows her down, helps her unhook it. She’s thinking about something, as she pulls on a heavy coat and slings a rifle over her shoulders. He’s starting to think the conversation is over when she wheels on him, pulling a pair of goggles up over her eyes.

“Sorry, being reliable isn’t really my thing,” she swings onto the snowcat saddle and kickstarts it. “I guess that’s why Lupin’s got you.”

“I mean it, Fujiko.”

She laughs, bright and real and alive. “I know. I’ll see what I can do.”

Then, she’s gone.

-


End file.
